Bordering the Eastern Himalaya: Boundaries, Passes, Power Contestations
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Bordering the Eastern Himalaya: Boundaries, Passes, Power Contestations By Susan M. Walcott Walcott, S. M. (January 01, 2010). Bordering the Eastern Himalaya: Boundaries, Passes, Power Contestations”. Geopolitics 15(1):62-81 DOI:10.1080/14650040903420396 Made available courtesy of Taylor & Francis: http://www.tandfonline.com ***Reprinted with permission. No further reproduction is authorized without written permission from Taylor & Francis. This version of the document is not the version of record. Figures and/or pictures may be missing from this format of the document. *** Abstract: National borders in the eastern Himalaya region exhibit pressures of modernisation transition between two powerful emerging nation-states. The research question concerns under what circumstances borders are maintained. Consideration falls on the role of physical features, borders as cultural identity markers, and passes as transgressive spaces, negotiated through historical shifts in population and politics. A geopolitical history of boundary contestations in this region indicates the role of passes as conduits of political and cultural flows. Power relations bound space that cultural preservation makes worth delimiting. Keywords: Himalayan region | emerging nation-states | international borders | cultural identity | geopolitics | geography | boundary contestation Article: INTRODUCTION From time immemorial, the Himalayas have provided us with a magnificent frontier. We cannot allow that barrier to be penetrated because it is also the principal barrier to India. 1 Nation-states located along the Himalayan watershed between India and China face interrelated threats to their cultural, environmental, economic and political integrity. This study examines borders in the eastern Himalaya, highlighting cartographic changes as evidence of shifts in power extension and cultural contestation. Flat political lines and topographic shading show up clearly on a map; a fuller political geography considers the less visible dynamic alignments of culture (e.g., religion, language, ethnicity, customs), historical consequences of invasions and domination, and economic forces at work that are indispensable for understanding regional alignments. Borders are shaped by political considerations that in some cases transgress and in other cases preserve political identity ties of ‘us’ and ‘them’. These distinctions are defined largely by cultural affinity, used in the anthropological sense as a set of shared values and practices that distinguish a group. State political power is often employed in an attempt to create a national culture. A particular focus of this research falls on the country of Bhutan, which codified state- related cultural practices in visibly distinct dress, architecture, language and behaviour regulations known as “One Nation, One People” at the outset of the Sixth Five Year Plan in January 1989. Later sections of this paper show how such distinctions, carried by migrants from other areas, have significant political ramifications as people are excluded, included or overwhelm bordering political areas, causing ongoing international tensions. The goal of this study is to illustrate how borders matter as politically potent cultural identifiers by tracing the historical evolution and continuing contestation around current borders, considering the permeability and penetration points of even as formidable a barrier as the Himalayas. In a region ringed by these heights, numerous pressures on strategically important boundaries include the desire to retain lowland areas for agricultural and military access, along with passes through high mountain areas (Figure 1). As the opening quote by India's founding Prime Minister Nehru suggests, the physical boundary is perceived as the furthest extension of a strategic political interest by parties on both sides of it. By way of categorisation, the term “nation-state” is used for a larger scale political entity than a “state”, except for quoted references preserving its use in the source. The case of Sikkim even illustrates a sliding down this scale, from an independent nation-state to a state within India. FIGURE 1 Landscape regions in the Himalaya. The following study of an under-examined region of the world demonstrates the multiple issues involved in border demarcations, primarily over the last sixty years of political change. Although Lord Curzon at the turn of the twentieth century famously likened frontiers to a “razor's edge” tripwire separating war/peace and life/death of nation-states, one hundred years later the spectre of nuclear engagement leads to boundary blurring and nudged readjustment. Such shifts in international boundaries reflect outcomes of global geopolitics as they play out on the ground, relocating people along cartographic contours. 2 Borders in the eastern Himalaya indicate demarcation lines at the far edges of a multinational power struggle. As mountain ranges resulted from the physical collision between the Indian and East Asian tectonic plates, so this region is politically re-shaped by the ongoing contest between the continental powers of India and China. Like the conflicting geologic forces underneath them, China proclaims it is a “peaceful rising” continental power while it joins India in exerting relentless pressure on their contingent neighbours and closely monitoring alignments. The entities at their interstices sometimes subside under such forces, as illustrated in the following case studies. Consideration falls on three particular aspects of borders, negotiated through shifts in population and politics: enduring physical features such as passes, evolved historical-cultural boundaries, and the shifting political borders that map them. First, physical features set off distinct areas in this region; passes function as transgressive spaces through which elements intrude that can be significantly different from those prevailing within the boundaries entered. This section spotlights the political pivot points of strategic passes in Sikkim, Bhutan and the Chumbi Valley of Tibet, which constitute a long-standing arena for the power play between those controlling the Indian and Chinese land masses (Figure 2). These passes serve as strategic mountain chokepoints critical in global power competition, analogous to Mahan's assertion of the importance of control of waterway straits. 3 In this case control involves headwaters of major Asian rivers that can serve as hydropower sources. Political forces that manage and impact access to strategic riverine regions are particularly important and understudied as they relate to developing countries on the periphery of major population centres and global attention. FIGURE 2 Political boundaries, major passes, rivers and urban areas in Bhutan and surrounding region. The historical narrative in the second section explains the evolution of regional configurations as political-cultural alliances, while the third section traces their contemporary outcomes. The discussion of whether political or cultural considerations form the primary determinant for national affiliation is inconclusive. In the case of Bhutan, both culturally distinct ethnic Nepalis and culturally similar Tibetans were given the choice of citizenship or expulsion in the 1990s, but the onus of proof fell more heavily on the former. 4 From its cultural hearth in India the Vajrayana Buddhism practiced in Tibet, Bhutan, and by the former dominant group in Sikkim maintains its politically protected status only in Bhutan, which acknowledges heritage links with bordering countries and conceives of its boundaries as classically encompassing a culturally cohesive entity. 5 Bhutanese liken their situation to “a yam between two boulders”, referring both to the historic squeeze between Tibet and British India as well as the contemporary tug of interests between China and India. 6 Borders still matter. Theoretical Framework Categorisation of borders largely falls into two camps: an older approach that focused on the role of geographic features in defining and maintaining borders, 7 and another that prioritises the examination of borders' functions and their formation processes. 8 An updated extension of the latter approach considers the concrete surface political lines as a manifestation of dynamic forces underlying socio-cultural processes. 9 This study looks at borderlands in the eastern Himalaya as spaces controlled by nation-states whose boundaries demonstrate the shifting demarcations of power contestations and the politics of identity that seek to preserve distinctiveness. These can be codified as in the “One Nation, One People” proclamation, or seen in attempts of various rebel groups such as the Assamese and Gurkha to carve out autonomous territories. This study illustrates the important fluidity of borders along with the constant assertion that they are being regularised to reflect a container of permanent, cognitively distinct categories. 10 Culture is not co-terminus with political borders even in this physically segmented region, but boundaries serve to define regions of historically concentrated cultures that are later re-aligned as counter-affiliated frontier zones. Regional examples are China's Buddhist Tibet versus India's Buddhist Sikkim (overwhelmed by Hindu Nepali migrants just prior to its absorption into India) and independent Buddhist Bhutan. Forms of culturally based allegiance signifiers to the political system can include language and clothing as well as a value system, if not